As unsettling as I found Jason Story’s public disparagement of me, worse was the revelation of Susan’s recent financial transactions. Supposedly, two weeks before her death she paid off more than three thousand dollars in credit card bills after having deposited thirty five hundred dollars into her checking account. The sudden windfall could not be explained. Her husband had been laid off from his sales job during the fall and Susan earned less than twenty thousand dollars a year.
“Mr. Wesley’s here,” Lucy said, taking the paper from me.
Wesley was dressed in black ski pants and turtleneck, a bright red jacket tucked under his arm. I could tell by the expression on his face, the firm set of his jaw, that he was aware of the news.
“Did the Post try to talk to you?”
He pulled out a chair. “I can’t believe they ran the damn thing without giving you a chance for comment.”
“A reporter from the Post called as I was leaving the office yesterday, “I replied. “He wanted to question me about Susan’s homicide and I chose not to talk to him. I guess that was my chance.”
“So you didn’t know anything, had no forwarning about the slant of this thing.”
“I was in the dark until I picked up the paper.”
“It’s all over the news, Kay.”
He met my eyes. “I heard it on television this morning. Marino called. The press in Richmond is having a field day. The implication is that Susan’s murder may be connected to the medical examiner’s office – that you may be involved and have suddenly left town.”
“That’s insane.”
“How much of the article is true?” he asked.
“The facts have been completely distorted. I did call Susan’s house when she didn’t show up at work. I wanted to make certain she was all right, and then I needed to find out if she remembered printing Waddell at the morgue. I did go see her on Christmas Eve to give her a gift and the poinsettia. I suppose my promise of favors was when she told me she was quitting and I said for her to let me know if she needed a reference, or if there was anything I could do for her.”
“What about the business of her not wanting to be listed as a witness in Eddie Heath’s case?”
“That was the afternoon she broke several jars of formalin and retreated upstairs to my office. It’s routine to list autopsy assistants or techs as witnesses when they assist in the posts. In this instance, Susan was present for only the external examination and was adamant about not wanting her name on Eddie Heath’s autopsy report.
I thought her request and demeanor were weird, but there was no confrontation.”
“This article makes it look as if you were paying her off,” Lucy said. “That’s what I would wonder if I read this and didn’t know.”
“I certainly wasn’t paying her off, but it sounds as if someone was,” I said.
“It’s all making a little more sense,” Wesley said. “If this bit about her financial picture is accurate, then Susan had gotten a substantial sum of money, meaning she must have supplied a service to someone. Around this same time your computer was broken into and Susan’s personality changed. She became nervous and unreliable. She avoided you as much as she could. I think she couldn’t face you, Kay, because she knew she was betraying you.”
I nodded, struggling for composure. Susan had gotten into something she did not know how to get out of, and it occurred to me that this might be the real explanation for why she fled from Eddie Heath’s post and then from Jennifer Deighton’s. Her emotional outbursts had nothing to do with witchcraft or feeling dizzy after being exposed to formalin fumes. She was panicking. She did not want to witness either case.
“Interesting,” Wesley said when I voiced my theory. “If you ask what of value did Susan Story have to sell, the answer is information. If she didn’t witness the posts, she had no information. And whoever was buying this information from her is quite likely the person she was going to meet on Christmas Day.”